God. Real. Right.

Some pertinent links for this article:
Irving Bible Church. The IBC Position Paper.
Denton Bible Church. DTS President Mark Bailey’s Clarification.
On August 24, 2008, for the first time in its forty year history, Irving Bible Church had a woman deliver the Sunday sermon to its congregation. For all I know (not being there but being in my home church instead) it was the best sermon they’ve heard in forty years, many people responded with commitments which will result in lifelong changes, and a burnt-over revival has begun in North Texas. But none of that determines whether it was the right decision.
The question remains, should a woman preach so to a congregation? To secularists it may understandably seem an absurd question. But to those who take obedience to New Testament teachings seriously, it is important. And to those who take the New Testament seriously and want to remain both relevant and prophetic in culture the question is not only important, but difficult.
What Catherine Albanese says about religion in general is also true about churches. That is, churches serve in both an ordinary and an extraordinary relationship with (more…)

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With the highest court in California ruling that gay marriages must be allowed comes a realization that many people do not understand what makes marriage so ideal an institution. If the requirement that marriage be between man and woman is erased in this culture, both of the most significant characteristics of marriage will have been all but lost.
The first, though not the point of this post, is worth mentioning. That is, the richest, most personal, most intimate experience between human beings can only be that if it includes complete vulnerability and trust. (more…)

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The decision of some Reformed Jewish leaders in England to transform a book of prayer into a means for breaking the gender barrier (described here for instance) raises an old, pretty simple issue. But it also reveals a much deeper problem about how people attempt to evade the Bible’s message and use the very tools intended to clarify scripture to muddle it.
The simple issue is whether masculine pronouns and images used about God throughout scripture–indeed, used on almost every page–communicate something true about the nature of God. Christians have been arguing more and more about whether God is male, or masculine, over the past half century. C.S. Lewis’ article on what he refers to as priestesses in the church (in God in the Dock) is his response to the Anglican push in 1948 to ordain women to the priesthood! This article at Crosswalk illustrates how common the topic is by raising it as the first question at issue after the existence of God. (more…)

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